"In the sea of life there is no escape from one's own desires." For three days the tide has pulled him back to the same empty stretch of the southern French coast. Three nights of dreams that were never his. He can't say why he keeps returning. He only knows the sea is calling him, in a voice that rises from somewhere inside his own chest. Then, in the blood-red light of the sinking sun, she rises from the waves. Copper hair, heavy and wet. Eyes like the deepest ocean, lit from within. Too beautiful to be human. The old sailors had names for what she is, and they had warnings. He knows them too. He wades in to meet her anyway. Some longing runs deeper than any fear. And the sea rarely gives back what it has taken.